Roadtrip Day 1: Mystic, CT and Boston, MA

The first day of our roadtrip began with a stop by the dog boarding place to drop off Guinness, and then we were off to Mystic, CT!  The drive went SO well (I was super worried we were going to hit a ton of traffic since it was a Friday morning... but McGee thought it would go smoothly and he was very right!).  We made it in an easy 4 hours, and immediately stopped by Mystic Pizza for lunch because we were super hungry.  It was a cute place right in the middle of town, and the pizza was good (but quite greasy!).  They had tons of paraphernalia from the Mystic Pizza movie, and they have TV screens all over the restaurant with the movie on loop.  McGee had never seen the movie, so he wasn't quite as stoked as I was about the place, but he still enjoyed the pizza and the local beer (Mystic Bridge IPA).  

After we finished a nice lunch, we were walking back to the car and I saw this awesome whale:

Next up in Mystic, CT was the B.F. Clyde's Cider Mill!!  I was so excited.  It was a cute little mill, and they had lots of local honeys and maple syrups and jams.  They also had a whole wall of their hard ciders and apple wines, so we picked up a few hard ciders because I loooooove hard cider!  We also each got a cup of their fresh apple cider and enjoyed that outside.  We had SUCH beautiful weather all weekend!  We were very lucky.  

Notice that there's no "G" on "Wine Tastin"?  I thought that was cute.

And here's one of the beautiful trees I saw in Mystic!  There were definitely still lots of green trees all throughout New England, but most of them were beginning to change to lovely Fall colors.  I guess peak season for the leaves this year won't be for a few more weeks. 

We did a little bit of shopping around town, and we also stopped by the Mystic Beanery for some amaaaaazing coffee before our drive up to Boston.  We stayed with a few of McGee's friends in Boston for the night, and they took us to a really fantastic Mexican restaurant for dinner that was near Harvard campus (the campus was gorgeous!), and then we went back to their place to hang out with their dogs and drink some of the B.F. Clyde's hard cider while playing Apples to Apples.  

So, let me tell you about the hard cider:  That stuff was POWERFUL.  We were all expecting a typical delicious hard cider, but little did we know that the cider was strooooong!!!  It was over 14% ABV.  I hadn't even checked the label to see how strong it was, because I was assuming the usual 5% or so.  It was hard to even enjoy it... McGee's friend liked it though, so we left the 2nd bottle with her.  I kept a bottle of the hard cider that we got that's apples mixed with cranberries, so I'll try that one some other time when I'm feeling brave. 

That was it for Day 1!!  Next up was Boothbay Harbor, Maine.